Earring
by Firefly99
Summary: A teenage Cloud gets fed up of the way the others mistreat him over trivialities...[One shot. No romance, no nothing. Maybe a touch of CloTi, but very, very, very slight.]


Earring

by Firefly99

* * *

Cloud admitted that his mother had put her foot down.

This was unusual. Normally, she was generous to the point where it appeared obsessive, and would hand out anything that Cloud asked for.

But during the last week or so, he'd been finally bullied for not following the latest fashion from Midgar – the male ear piercing. It was amazing how teenagers gathered like white blood cells to a wound around the slightest, most trivial differences, especially when they were Cloud's.

Tiny, tiny things. Silly things. Stupid matters of fashion. For some reason, they all became the be all and end all.

The truth is, every teenager seeks similarity and conformity. And when there is one who cannot conform, there will be pain.

Cloud could not conform.

The truth was, Cloud was different. Everything about him; the way he spoke, the way he looked, dressed, the way he acted – everything was wrong, from his eyes to his hair to his gait.

The lack of the earring was the most trivial of them all, and as much as it therefore annoyed Cloud that he was even vaguely bothered by it, it did. A brown-haired boy with a breaking voice and a tendency to follow Lockheart around everywhere had brought it up. Cloud had blacked both of his eyes with a roundhouse punch to the bridge of the nose. He'd enjoyed it. It felt good; it felt like some of his anger was leaving him. The anger that that retard and his friends and Lockheart, who thought she was so great because she had big tits, had caused him in the first place. By ignoring him. By leaving him out all his life.

It made him sick. No-one cared about him, no-one gave a damn, except his mother always screwing everything up.

Her view on things was to narrow, too blinkered, too simple. If he was lonely – go make some friends. If he felt miserable – get a girlfriend. Everything was simple and clean-cut and obvious to her, and that was why he hated her.

The earring wasn't a fashion thing. It was something else, something inexplicably personal, and they were using it as an excuse to go into even more depth.

Tired of this, Cloud had been forced to ask his mother if he could have his ear pierced. She'd put her foot down.

So that was how it went. More agony because of this stupid little earring.

Day by day, Lockheart and her lackeys gave him pain over the slightest little things that shouldn't have bothered him. But they did, because Lockheart was lovely – he loved her hair, all long and silky and the colour of coffee. Sure, she wasn't actively involved in Cloud's personal purgatory, but when the others were, she laughed along with them. And that hurt – that the closest thing he had to a friend was sadistic, and got her kicks out of watching him get hurt. So he'd started calling her Lockheart. It kept it impersonal.

Finally, he reached the point where he could no longer bear it, and had headed over to the local shop, avoiding the catcalls of the others and trying to ignore Lockheart's laughter. It was rather more impulsive than he usually went for – normally he thought about things in as much depth as possible – but today he didn't care. Today he was pissed. So he didn't think when he blew every penny he had on a sterling silver earring.

In retrospect it was a stupid thing to do, but by the time he'd realised that, he was in front of the bathroom mirror, holding a needle pilfered from his mother's sewing kit and washed in disinfectant, and with his ear lobe stretched out taught and freshly numbed with a mouth ulcer anaesthetic he'd found in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

He almost threw down the needle. This was stupid. This was going to hurt. Did it matter? Even if he did have the earring in his ear by tomorrow, they'd still find something else. They always found something else.

But still. Three hundred and fifty gil was a lot of money to wimp out now.

Mentally cursing, he pressed the needle experimentally against his earlobe. And it

hurt

like

HELL.

Gritting his teeth, he forced the needle even further through his earlobe, and it hurt even more.

Groaning, he passed over to the bathroom door, locked it, and returned to the mirror.

This was going to take a while.

* * *

His ear was bleeding.

It was probably a better idea to use his money on getting his ear pierced properly, but of course he hadn't thought of_that_at the time, had he? There was blood over the needle, too. He rinsed it under the tap, trying to ignore his stinging ear. It was throbbing. Like a bass guitar. It was horrible.

_Lockheart_

_and the others better shut up for a bit now._

Cussing, he raised the earring, and fixed it through the hole in his ear with a wet squelch of blood. The fact that it was in direct contact with an open wound made it throb even more, but he didn't care.

He began the task of cleaning his freshly-pierced ear with the corner of a wet tissue, dabbing it tentatively. It stung. Oh god, it stung. The water on the tissue was far too cold, and that didn't help.

_Lockheart's_

_lackeys better shut up._

Finally, a little scared of what kind of mess he'd made, he turned to look at his ear in the mirror.

The lobe was bright red from being held taught, puffy and swollen with blood, and apart from all that-

-it looked good.

Cloud admired his new fashion accessory briefly, tilting his head, letting the metal glint in the bathroom light. Then, to his delight, he'd noticed it'd stopped bleeding. Obviously the earring must have stemmed the flow.

Short of anything else to do, he decided to put a plaster over it. He could lie, tell his mother that he'd grazed his ear…somehow. Well, she'd never believe it, but he could try.

Lying to his mother over something she'd never believe.

_Shut...**up**,_

_Lockheart.___

But…It was a small piece of rebellion. Just enough to show him he could free himself from those rules, those chains that bound him down. Those that stopped his wings from spreading.

Perhaps he could step up from that, Cloud thought, fingering the small rebellion lodged in his ear through the plaster as he headed back to his bedroom. Perhaps he could rebel in a big way. Do something he'd wanted to do for as long as he could remember. And this time, no-one could tell him different.

The SOLDIER recruitment pamphlet lay open on the bed.

* * *

A.N. Inspired to write this by looking at Cloud's rather subdued tastes in accessories compared to later FF heroes, like Tidus and Squall.

It didn't come out as well as I wanted. I wanted Cloud to be screaming with anger, but he didn't end up angry, just…sad.

Eh well.


End file.
